Below we highlight the current bottoms-up, year-over-year growth estimates for the first quarter. After a decline of more than 100% in Q4 '07, Financials are expected to see year-over-year declines of 51.3% in the first quarter. Consumer Discretionary is the only other sector expected to see declines, but these two are enough to cause expectations for the entire index to be negative (-9.9%). Eight out of ten sectors are expected to see growth in earnings compared with the first quarter of 2007. Energy is expected to see the biggest gain at 22.8%, followed by Consumer Staples (8.1%), Technology (7.9%) and Materials (6.3%).
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